1. Field of Technology
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a printing control method, and particularly to an image forming apparatus which is provided with a plurality of types of toner groups each having different color reproducible range, and a print control method utilizing said image forming apparatus.
2. Description of Prior Art
Printing apparatuses including printers and digital multi-functional peripherals (herein after referred as image forming apparatus) have been commonly utilized. The image forming apparatus, forms an image based on a print job sent from a computer terminal, forms an electrostatic latent image by irradiating a light beams on an electrostatically charged photosensitive material according to the image, develops the latent image by applying a charged toner to form a toner image, and transfers the toner image onto a sheet of paper via a transfer roller or a transfer member such as an intermediate transfer belt.
Materials such as the toner utilized in the image forming apparatus respectively have color characteristics, including the color characteristic which is easy or not easy for reproducing a specific color. Therefore, in cases of image formation, in order to reproduce the color of an original image with high fidelity as far as possible, prescribed image processing has been implemented by considering the color characteristics of the materials.
For example, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-182634 discloses a color reproduction processing switching apparatus which automatically recognizes an image characteristics of a subject image, and switches to the most appropriate color reproduction processing (or color matching) system in accordance with the image characteristics.
In this way, by switching the color reproduction system according to the image characteristics, it may be possible to reproduce colors close to that of the original image. However, each toner group composed of CMY or CMYK toners has a color domain of reproducible color (to be referred as reproducible color range), and in cases where the original image contains a color beyond the color reproducible range, the desired original color image may not be reproduced.